A Win for Free Speech at SCOTUS
Chike Uzuegbunam may not be a household name, but the principle for which he fights — free speech — should unify us all. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 Monday that Uzuegbunam can continue his lawsuit against Georgia Gwinnett College over the school’s violation of his freedom of speech by severely restricting his ability to distribute Christian literature on campus.
“University police officers first approached Uzuegbunam as he distributed Christian literature on campus in 2016,” reports The Washington Free Beacon. “The officers told him he could not distribute the literature because he was not in a university-designated ‘free speech zone.’ When Uzuegbunam moved to one of the zones, he was again told to stop because he was being disruptive. University officials allegedly threatened him with disciplinary action. Uzuegbunam, who was joined in the lawsuit by fellow Christian student Joseph Bradford, requested compensatory damages of one dollar to signify that the school had violated his rights.”
Uzuegbunam’s supporters range from Christians and conservative advocates of free speech to even the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been a fair weather fan of its own namesake for some time now.
So why was the decision 8-1 and not 9-0? Chief Justice John Roberts dissented.
Roberts was wrong, albeit for an understandable reason. He bought the same argument that prevailed in lower courts — that Uzuegbunam had no standing in the case, not only as a former student but because the college later reversed its own policy, thus (ostensibly) making the issue moot. He also mocked the $1 damages sought.
But Uzuegbunam’s rights were still violated, and no school should get away with that just because it later backs down. What, then, would prevent a school from censoring speech just long enough to have the intended effect before appearing to relent?
Standing is far more important than just a technicality, and we cannot have a justice system bogged down with lawsuits that do not deal with concrete injury. Yet the First Amendment is under direct and all-out assault, particularly on the very college campuses where it should be a prized right and value. Thus, eight justices were correct in protecting the First Amendment and issuing a warning of sorts to any college administrators who think it will suffice to offer students a “free speech zone” that, in this case, amounted to 0.0015% of campus.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by all seven of the others, and he made clear the bottom line: “It is undisputed that Uzuegbunam experienced a completed violation of his constitutional rights when respondents enforced their speech policies against him.” And that shouldn’t happen in America. ~ The Patriot Post
Buckle Up for an $86 Billion Pension Bailout
“It was the best day of my Senate career,” said Ohio Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown on Saturday — which means it was probably the worst day of his Senate career for the rest of us.
Brown was referring to passage of the abominably misnamed and misappropriated American Rescue Plan, a $1,900,000,000,000 grab bag of progressive giveaways that we wrote about yesterday, and that the House will vote on (again) today, and that our children and grandchildren will be on the hook for tomorrow. More specifically, Brown was referring to an $86 billion provision tucked inside that larger bill that will bail out some 185 mismanaged union pension plans.
“Just to show you how bad this bill is,” said Republican Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty last week, “there’s more money in this to bail out union pension funds than all the money combined for vaccine distribution and testing.”
As even the leftist spendthrifts at The New York Times admit, this taxpayer-funded giveaway to the Democrat-beholden unions “has nothing to do with the pandemic.” Moreover, they report, the failure “predated the pandemic and is a result of fading unions, serial bankruptcies and the misplaced hope that investment income would foot most of the bill so that employers and workers wouldn’t have to.”
As the Times continues, “Both the House and Senate stimulus measures would give the weakest plans enough money to pay hundreds of thousands of retirees — a number that will grow in the future — their full pensions for the next 30 years. The provision does not require the plans to pay back the bailout, freeze accruals or to end the practices that led to their current distress, which means their troubles could recur. Nor does it explain what will happen when the taxpayer money runs out 30 years from now.”
No wonder it was “the best day” of Sherrod Brown’s Senate career.
Perhaps even worse than the bailout of these pensions is the failure to address the structural flaws of the plans themselves. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley introduced his own proposal to fix the failing plans going forward rather than, as he put it, giving the Democrats a blank check.
“Not only is their plan totally unrelated to the pandemic,” said Grassley in a news release, “but it also does nothing to address the root cause of the problem. Without a plan like the one I’m proposing, taxpayers will be on the hook for another bailout down the road.”
All too predictably, Grassley’s motion failed along party lines, 49 to 50. (Alaska Republican Dan Sullivan was absent due to a family funeral.)
But, hey, at least Sherrod Brown had his best day ever. ~The Patriot Post
Texas Responds to Growing Border Crisis
Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Saturday announced the launch of Operation Lone Star, an effort combining the Texas Department of Public Safety and the National Guard “to combat the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas.”
Making clear who was responsible for the escalating border crisis, Abbott stated, “The crisis at our southern border continues to escalate because of socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden Administration policies that refuse to secure the border and invite illegal immigration. Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans. We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.”
But it’s not just Republicans who recognize the current tenuous situation at America’s southern border. Democrat Representative Henry Cuellar (TX) weighed in last week, stating, “We are weeks, maybe even days, away from a crisis on the southern border. Inaction is simply not an option. Our country is currently unprepared to handle a surge in migrants in the middle of the pandemic.” He added, “Migrants are illegally crossing, potentially exposing border communities to the coronavirus and putting us at risk. Right now, none of the migrants are being tested for COVID-19 by Border Patrol. As a border representative, I will continue to fight in Washington for my community to ensure they have the necessary funding and resources to properly care for these migrants and to keep American families safe. I urge the socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden administration to listen and work with the communities on the southern border who are dealing with the surge of migrants.”
Just how bad is the border crisis? According to Arizona’s Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, the border’s “wide open” and there’s “chaos going on the border based on these [ socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden] administrative decisions.” He added, “[There were] 141 countries breached [on] our southwest border in the first nine months, over 1,000 gang member members, 822 assaults on agents, 271 deaths on our border. This is a crime scene.”
This is the predictable result from rolling back the effective policies the Trump administration put in place to stem the crisis.
Speaking of Donald Trump, the former president laid into socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden on Friday as he observed that the border is “now totally out of control thanks to the disastrous leadership of socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden.” Trump asserted, “The spiraling tsunami at the border is overwhelming local communities, depleting budgets, crowding hospitals, and taking jobs from legal American workers. When I left office, we had achieved the most secure border in our country’s history. Under socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden, it will soon be worse, more dangerous, and more out of control than ever before. He has violated his oath of office to uphold our Constitution and enforce our laws.”
Trump also stumped for restarting construction on the border wall, which socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden infamously ended on his first day in office. “Despite being delayed by years of litigation and politics by the Democrats, the wall is almost finished and can be quickly completed. Doing so will save thousands of lives. The socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden Administration must act immediately to end the border nightmare that they have unleashed onto our Nation.”
Unfortunately, there’s not much chance of that. ~The Patriot Post
Nice Names Make for Nasty Bills
It’s been said many times and across many cultures that those who win the war get to write the history. Similarly, it can also be said that those who win the war of words get to write the legislation.
In recent years, the Left has seemed to embrace this second lesson far better than the Right. Think about it: Hardly a week passes when the Democrats haven’t put forth a sweet-sounding bill that proposes the most radical assortment of ideas.
As W. James Antle III writes in the Washington Examiner, “Congressional Democrats are baking some of their most controversial policy proposals into American-as-apple-pie bill titles as they try to enact a stridently liberal agenda with razor-thin majorities in both houses. The For the People Act, the Equality Act, and even the American Rescue Act are all innocuous or even noble-sounding bills that polarize the deeply divided Congress and also allow Democrats to portray Republicans as opposing truth, justice, and the American way.”
If ever a trio of bill names deserved the title “Orwellian,” it’s these.
The first of them, the For the People Act, is also known as HR 1, and it couldn’t be any more dangerous to the notion of free and fair elections. As the normally reserved John Fund wrote last week, “It is the worst piece of legislation I have even seen in my 40 years reporting from Washington. HR 1 would cement all of the worst changes in election law made in blue states in 2020 and nationalize them. Federal control of elections would be the norm. States would be relegated to colonial outposts that carry out Washington DC’s mandates.”
Our Louis DeBroux offers an excellent assessment of HR 1 here, but suffice it to say, there’s nothing For the People about it.
As for the Equality Act, it gives the impression that its noble purpose is to simply guarantee equal rights for all Americans, including those in the “LGBTQ+” community. But at what cost? Discriminating against people of faith? Allowing biological males to access women’s facilities and forcing our daughters to compete against them in sports? The bill’s provisions turn “equality” on its head.
The American Rescue Act (or Plan) is equally deceptive. As we wrote yesterday, “[Joe Biden says it] ‘puts us on the path to beating the virus,’ which is flat wrong, because we’re already beating it. The vaccine rollout is accelerating, new infections are way down, we’re building up herd immunity, and, as our Nate Jackson pointed out Friday, ‘American businesses hired new workers at an impressive clip in February, adding an expectation-shattering 379,000 jobs.’”
Give the Democrats credit: They can look back through history and see the sort of words that work: Social Security. Affirmative Action. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Affordable Care Act. Women’s Health Protection Act.
How could anyone be against something as sweet-sounding as “social security” or as boldly alliterative as “affirmative action” or as uplifting as “recovery and reinvestment” or as attractive as “affordable care”?
When we think of history’s most destructive little books, Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto comes quickly to mind. But as a leftist primer for waging the war of words and ideas, it’s hard to overestimate the influence in recent years of a 124-page book published in 2004 by former Cal-Berkeley professor of cognitive sciences and linguistics George Lakoff.
His book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, explains how words and messages are framed and how those frames affect the way we see the world. To make his point, he takes the conservative term “tax relief” and explains why it works: “Think of the framing for ‘relief,’” he writes. “For there to be relief, there must be an affliction, an afflicted party, and a reliever who removes the affliction and is therefore a hero. And if people try to stop the hero, those people are villains.”
Similarly, think of the issue of abortion and how the Left has utterly abandoned that term. Instead, leftists frame it by using a far more pleasing term: “choice.” After all, who could be against something as freedom-based and commonsensical as choice?
This framing of the debate is the influence of George Lakoff, and it’s everywhere in media and in politics. And we should never let our guard down, nor turn our bovine excrement detectors off. ~The Patriot Post
CAL THOMAS
How to Ruin America
I recently had to cancel a long-planned trip to South America, either because the countries I wanted to enter are closed or required up to a two-week quarantine in a hotel. It doesn’t matter that I have been vaccinated and have repeatedly tested negative for COVID-19.
Several countries in Europe I would like to visit are also closed. Ireland imposes a 2,000 Euro fine for anyone leaving the country.
All of this while the United States is experiencing a flood of people crossing the southern border, including unaccompanied minors. They are overwhelming Border Patrol agents who are releasing many of them into the country with little chance they will show up for court dates, or temporarily detaining them in “rapid-processing hubs,” with a goal, writes the Washington Post, “of releasing them into the United States within 72 hours.”
Politicians have flipped positions on illegal immigration but are never held accountable.
Here are three from 2014. First, Barack scumbag/liar-nObama: “Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it.”
scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton: “We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. … So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”
socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden: “Those who are pondering risking their lives to reach the United States should be aware of what awaits them. It will not be open arms. It will not be come on — it will be, we’re going to hold hearings with our judges consistent with international law and American law, and we’re going to send the vast majority of you back.”
What’s changed?
In a statement about the growing number coming to America, especially from Honduras and El Salvador, former President Trump released said: “The spiraling tsunami at the border is overwhelming local communities, depleting budgets, crowding hospitals, and taking jobs from legal American workers. When I left office, we had achieved the most secure border in our country’s history. Under socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden, it will soon be worse, more dangerous, and more out of control than ever before. He has violated his oath of office to uphold our Constitution and enforce our laws.”
He is right, but the socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden administration seems unwilling to do anything about it. No nation can survive if it fails to control its borders. Our nation is unique in the world. We are a nation of laws. We are a nation with a rich history. If we abandon what our forebears fought to preserve, what will be left but a shell of a once-great country?
If we abandon what our forebears fought to preserve, what will be left but a shell of a once-great country?
Too many schools remain closed, but the border is increasingly open. Does this make sense?
Some House Democrats are supporting bills that would grant legal status to millions of immigrants who broke our laws to get here. Democrats will make sure they quickly become voters to solidify their hold on power. As The Washington Post reported last Saturday, “The measures (the socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden administration) have taken are aimed (at) accommodating the increase, not to contain it or change the upward trend.”
We had better decide what kind of country we want to be, or we will become a country others want us to be. That was clearly not the vision of our Founders, of the many presidents who succeeded them, or even recent Democratic presidents and presidential candidates.
Until now. ~The Patriot Post
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